Eight days after its start, the Burro Fire has burned 26,731 acres in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Mount Lemmon, and officials expected the wildfire to be 51 percent contained Saturday evening.
On Saturday, firefighters monitored containment lines on the fire’s southern perimeter while crews on the northern edge continued suppression efforts with assistance from air resources, said Bea Day, incident commander for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team.
There was growth on the east side of the fire Saturday, operations section chief Jay Lusher said, but officials are allowing the fire there to continue.
“We are waiting for the rains, trying to keep that buffer between where the fire is, where the infrastucture is, and with the timing, we anticipate that plan is going to work,” Lusher said. “But we are ready up top if the fire does move, and we’ll be able to hold the fire out of the structures and infrastructures.”
Nearly 700 personnel were assigned to the blaze, including 15 fire crews, 44 engines, 32 water tenders, three bulldozers and seven helicopters, Day said.
“We had some firefighters start to go in (the east side of the fire), but it was over 113 degrees throughout and they thought it was too hot for them to be out away from their trucks,” Lusher said.
Officials are still working to determine the fire’s cause.
